Monterey County health officials noted a marked drop in the number of smokers in a major countywide assessment to be unveiled Tuesday. / Jay Dunn/The Salinas Californian

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Series on Monterey County health

The Salinas Californian’s “Our Health” series will examine trends in Monterey County. Each day this week health writer Dennis L. Taylor will report on a different key health concern facing local residents.

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In a major countywide assessment to be unveiled today, Monterey County health officials will lay out more than 235 pages of the top health issues facing the public – both good and bad – that includes a marked drop in the percentage of local smokers.

Between 2003 and 2012 there was a dramatic decrease (from 15.7 percent to 10.1 percent) in the percentage of adults who reported themselves as a current smoker, according to the Monterey County 2013 Community Health Assessment, which will be presented to the Board of Supervisors today. However, smoking remains far more prevalent with men. In 2012 there were three times as many male smokers as female smokers.

Tobacco use can take the form of smoking cigarettes, e-cigarettes, pipes, cigars and chewing tobacco. The drop spanned all race and ethnic groups over the past 10 years, with those who identify as white making up the highest percentage of smokers at 13.5 percent. Latino residents of Monterey County had the lowest percentage of smokers at 8.4 percent.

Monterey County smoking patterns follow a statewide trend that has seen numbers drop from nearly 24 percent of the population smoking in 1988 to less than 12 percent in 2010, a rate second only to Utah, according to the American Cancer Society.

Stricter smoking laws in California have likely contributed to the decline, said Angie Carrillo, the senior consultant for strategic communications for the Northern California region of the ACS.

“Remember when you could smoke in restaurants?” Carrillo said.

But it’s not just eateries; in California smoking is prohibited in all enclosed areas of workplaces, except for designated break rooms that are separately ventilated directly to the outside and located in areas where no one must enter to go to work.

As a result, between 1988 and 2010 the rate of smoking fell 30 percent, while during the same time period the national average fell just 11 percent, Carrillo said. That drop is critical to improving the health of residents. With 85 percent of lung cancer deaths attributed to tobacco use, and lung cancer being the most common cancer in the state behind prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women, tobacco use is a critical factor contributing to cancer death rates.

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But the positive numbers that Monterey County and the rest of the state are posting remains on an uncertain trajectory. There are still 3.6 million smokers in the state, and smoking remains the No. 1 preventable cause of disease and death.

Over the 24 years since Proposition 99, which levied a 25-cent tax on tobacco products, money to fight smoking has continued to fall as a result of inflation as well as the reduced number of people buying tobacco. In 2012 Proposition 29, which would have tacked on $1 per tobacco product, failed, mostly due to an anti-tax fervor in Southern California, Carrillo said.

Getting anti-smoking bills and propositions passed in California is becoming more difficult. In 2006 and 2012, tobacco companies spent well over $100 million in California fighting increases in the state tobacco tax, leaving the state 33rd in tobacco taxes nationwide, according to the California Department of Public Health. The state currently spends only 15 percent of what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends for a comprehensive tobacco control program.

“Tobacco people are smart,” Carrillo said. “They know they are losing customers.”

Dennis L. Taylor writes about health for The Salinas Californian. Follow him on Twitter @taylor_salnews.